On March 2 and 3, thirteen members of the Amherst College Men’s Track and Field team traveled to New York City to compete at the ECAC Championship meet and the near-legendary 168th Street Armory. Ultimately the Jeffs would lock down ECAC titles in three events and score in three others to merit 34 points for third place, the highest finish in program history. Though the Jeffs earned no championships on Friday night, junior Andrew Erskine did take eighth in the 5,000, while the DMR team comprising Pat Grimes, Alex Durkee, Matt Melton, and Ben Scheetz notch eighth as well with Durkee running an outstanding PR 400m split of 51.7.

Saturday’s competition for the Jeff’s began with junior Pat Grimes’s return to the mile race after placing 11th last March. This year, he asserted his prowess in the event among the best DIII milers on the East coast with a speedy kick over the last quarter mile that earned him a number-one finish. The win merited 10 points for the team and solidified Grimes’s position at 15th on the national performance list, giving him a solid chance of qualifying for the NCAA meet in Grinnell, IA next weekend. Sophomore Matt Melton, a native of the tri-state area, was the next Jeff to compete. Earlier in the season, he earned himself a berth in the seeded section of the 500m dash. Melton led the heat wire to wire, successfully holding off a late race charge by Nathan Bruno of Emmanuel College to get the win in a 1:04.19 PR. That marks the second year in a row that Jeff has won the ECAC 500m title. First year Nick Codola also competed in the event, clocking a PR of his own in an impressive 1:07.87. Senior captain Ben Scheetz grabbed the final victory for the Jeffs on the day in a school record 1,000m run of 2:25.50. Scheetz won the race in the fashion that we have been used to seeing from him for most of the indoor season: he led from the gun and finished completely uncontested with second place over two seconds behind. The Fairest College’s final points came in the afternoon’s final event: the 4x800m relay. The team comprised Junior Eli Howe and first years Alex Durkee, Romey “J-Rome” Sklar, and Lucas Lebovitz, who – clad in checkered sock and neon Nike spikes so loud that they drowned out nearly all of the cheering – ran a personal best 1:55.6 split to secure seventh place over Rochester in the same heat.